A Figure from the Common Lot

Virtual cover

Coming to Torsade in October!

Honoré Gremot is the first of four narrators, a Belgian not of the working class, not of the bourgeoisie . . . and not (though, like all Belgian Gremots, consumptive) persuaded life’s options are limited. Richard Everard has lost the family farm, as had Monsieur Gremot, Honoré’s father; in Richard’s case, through intemperance and loathing, rather than the fatal Gremot ambition. The Everards and the Gremots have a connection in common (annoying to both clans if they knew it) through the Sartains of Paris and New Orleans. Young Richard inherits the full weight of the Everard legacy, and the unrequited admiration of Élucide Gremot, of the Indiana Gremots.

Excerpt: A Figure from the Common Lot

Many acts of a selfish or heartless kind are more than we can make excuse for; and failing to find reason adequate to justify such cruelty, we feel that the act is unforgiveable. Yet, it is not the act; rather it is our sin, our human weakness, that frailty that is the inheritance of all mankind, that we understand and forgive. And this we may do, without excusing the act. It is myself that I forgive, when I forgive my brother.

from chapter four, “The Eye of a Magpie”; section i., The House of Gremot

(Honoré, an inmate of the almshouse, reads a religious tract)

He conjectured, Honoré thought, that Claudette’s spirit had descended from what Ebrach liked to call “the other realm”…or that she had materialized from the ether, and had drawn close to her brother. Her unseen hand had touched his, and through some occult conduit (one which no doubt Ebrach’s book explained), her soul had spoken—and he, Honoré, had comprehended its langauge. Therefore, last night, he had known with the heart what he could not know now, by the light of day, with the intellect. And yet…he did feel convinced Claudette had died, and could give no sound reason for thinking so. She had never been ill as Honoré had been. And he himself lived. Even so, he trusted this revelation of Ebrach’s…but could not call his surety faith.

from chapter four, “The Eye of a Magpie”; section i., The House of Gremot

(Honoré interviewed by Ebrach)

Bedlam (sequel) predicted for 2020

1881: the perfect palindromic year

Sending a book out to publishers is like fishing by tossing a worm onto the surface of a pond, and checking back from time to time to see what sort of progress the worm is making. This table of contents illustrates why A Figure from the Common Lot is difficult to pitch. People want the first three chapters, and Figure‘s chapters would take the reader to page 391. Chapter sectioning is not typical in fiction, but it happens.

Bedlam continues the story, with the railroad scheme forcing evacuation of the county Hospital for the Insane, the registering of unknown buried, and the end of the mandate specified by the founder—and of interest to new board member Ebrach—to determine (having the use of the inmates) the cause of insanity; this, beginning in the year of the Garfield assassination. Élucide finds, as Young Richard had said long ago, that the world makes a place for you and keeps you there.